Micro-fluid ejection devices continue to be used in a wide variety of applications, including ink jet printers, medical delivery devices, micro-coolers and the like. Of the uses, ink jet printers provide, by far, the most common use of micro-fluid ejection devices. Ink jet printers are typically more versatile than laser printers for some applications. As the capabilities of ink jet printers are increased to provide higher quality images at increased printing rates, fluid ejection heads, which are the primary printing components of ink jet printers, continue to evolve and become more complex.
Improved print quality requires that the ejection heads provide an increased number of ink droplets. In order to increase the number of ink droplets from an ejection head, ejection heads are designed to include more nozzles and corresponding ink ejection actuators. The number of nozzles and actuators for a “top shooter” or “roof shooter” ejection head can be increased in several ways known to those skilled in the art. For example, in an integrated nozzle plate containing nozzle holes, ink chambers, and ink channels laser ablated in a polyimide material, adjacent nozzles and corresponding ink chambers are typically offset from one another in a direction orthogonal to the ink feed slot. With a laser ablated nozzle plate containing ink chambers and ink channels, a minimum spacing between adjacent ink chambers is required to provide sufficient chamber wall structure for the ink chambers. Hence, a longer nozzle plate and corresponding semiconductor substrate is required as the number of nozzles and actuators for the ejection head is increased. However, the trend is toward providing narrower substrates and corresponding nozzle plates having greater functionality. A reduction in size results in increased production time due to tolerances required for such ejection heads.
Accordingly, there continues to be a need for smaller ejection heads having increased functionality and means for reducing production time for making such ejection heads.